The Nf=0 heavy quark potential from short to intermediate distances

Abstract We study the potential of a static quark–anti-quark pair in the range 0.05 fm⩽ r ⩽0.8 fm, employing a sequence of lattices up to 64 4 . Lattice artifacts in potential and force are investigated theoretically as well as numerically and continuum quantities are obtained by extrapolation of the results at finite lattice spacing. Consistency of the numerical results with the form of scaling violations predicted by an analysis a la Symanzik is found. The scale r 0 / a is determined for the Wilson action up to β =6.92.